St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1887-06-30
Can a Husband Open His Wife's Let
tiers?

/
saluted their queen.
Can a Husband Open His Wife's Let
tiers !?
Charles Dudley Warner ia Hdrper's.
That would depend, many would
say, upon what kind of husband he
is. But it cannot be put aside in that
fiippant manner, for it is legal right
that is in question, and it has recently
been decided in Paris tribunal that
the husband has tho right to open the
letters addressed to his wife. OF course
in America an appeal would instantly
be taken from this decision, and per-
haps by husbands themselves for in
this world rights are becoming so inn
partially distributed that this privilege
granted to the husband might at once
be EXTENDED to the wife, and she would
read all his business correspondence,
and his business is sometimes various
and complicated. The Paris decision
must be based upon the familiar form
ula that man and wife are one, and
that that one is the husband. If a
man has the right to read all the let
ters written to his wife, being his
property by reason of his ownership of
|
to know all that is said to her The
question is not whether wife ought
to receive letters that her husband
may not read, or listen to talk that he
may not hear, but whether he has a
sort of lOrdship that gives him privi-
leges which she does not enjoy. In
our modern notion of marriage, which
is getting itself expressed in statute
Snnnnanh n 00f
upon mutual trust and mutual
rights. In theory the husband and
wife are still one, and there can
nothing come into the life of one that
is not shared by the other; in fact, if
the marriage is perfect and the trust
absolute, the personality of each is re-
spected by the other, and each is free
| ~ the judge of what shall be contrib
uted to the common confidence and
if there are any cOncealments, it is
we'll believed that they are for the mu-
tual good. If every one were as per-
feet in the marriage relation as those
who are reading these lines, the ques-
ton of the wife's letters would never
arise. The man, trusting his wife,
would not care to pry into any little
secrets his wife might have, or bother
himself about her correspondence he
would know, indeed that if he had lost
her real affection, a surveillance of her
letters could not restore it.
Perhaps it is modern notion that
marriage is a union of trust and not of
suspicion, of expectation of faithful
ness the more there is freedom. At
ing the French decision, is away from
4 I,n To- ia;0
ny toward higher trust in an en-
larged freedom. And it is certain that
the rights cannot all be on one side
and the duties on the other. If the
husband legally may compel his wife
to show him her letters, the courts will
before long grant the same privilege
to the wife. But, without pressing
this point, the Drawer holds strongly
to the sacredness of correspondence.
| The letters one receives are in one
sense not his own. They contain the
confessions of another soul, the conf
dences of another mind, that would be
rudely treated if given my sort of pub
licity. Aud while husband and wife
are one to each other, they are two in
the eyes of other people, and it may
we'll happen that friend will desire to
SOIuOCuIuS W uiSCIOOI
which she would not intrust to the
babbling husband of that woman. Ev
cry life must have it's own privacy and
its own place of retirement. The let
ter is of all things the most personal
and intimate thing. It's bloom is gone
| when another eye sees it before the
one for which it was intended. Its
aroma all escapes when it is first open
ed by another person. One might as
we'll wear secondhand clothing as get
a second hand letter. Here, then, is a
sacred right that ought to be respected,
and can be respected without any in
jury to domestic life. The habit in
some families for the members of it to
show each others letters is most dis
enchanting one. 1t is just in the fam
| lily, between persons most intimate,
that these delicacies of consideration
for the privacy of each ought to be
most respected. No one can estimate
probably how much of the refinement,
of the delicacy of feeling, has been lost
to the world by the introduction of the
postal card. Anything written on a
postal card has no personality ; it is
bGnGl, and has as little power of
charming any one who receives 1T as
an advertisements in the newspaper.
1t is not simply the cheapness of the
communication that is vulgar, but the
publicity of it. One may have perhaps
only cents worth of affection to send,
but it seems worth much more when
enclosed in an envelOp. We have no
doubt, then, that on general principles
the French decision is a mistake, and
that it tends rather to vulgarize than
to retain the purity and delicacy of the
marriage relation. And the judges, SO
long even as men only occupy the
bench, will no doubt reverse it when
the logical march of events forces upon
them the question whether the wife
may open her husbands letters.